Mulder and Scully's Day Off
by VerySpecialSnowflake
Summary: Mulder and Scully have a day off.


Mulder opened the door to his and Scully's shared office, the familiar musty air swarming around the both of them. He let Scully in first before shutting the door behind him. Scully took her usual seat in front of Mulder's desk and Mulder took his normal position behind his own desk, studying some papers that had been handed to him on the way to his office.

"Scully, I've seen this before!" Mulder exclaimed, pointing to a file in the blue folder he was carrying.

Mulder reached for another folder on the corner of his desk when a black mass scurried out from underneath the pages. Mulder immediately recognized it as a bug. He jumped back, the rolling chair at the back of his desk going with him. Scully, seeing Mulder's actions, crossed the room to stand next to Mulder. She too saw the bug scurry underneath the desk, and they both crouched to see where the bug went. What Mulder saw revolted him.

Mulder saw an entire bed of cockroaches scurrying about on the underside of his desk. His stomach churned as he almost automatically reached for the phone to report the matter. A panicked string of sentences and long, panicked breaths ended with Mulder finally hanging up and telling Scully that maintenance was on their way.

A single man stepped through the threshold of the basement office, a bag hanging from his left hand.

"Special Agent Fox Mulder?" His query broke the silence of the office.

Mulder nodded and directed the man to the nub of the issue, which was the underside of his desk in this instance. He grimaced at the sight of the infestation and soon pulled out the walkie-talkie on his belt to radio the other maintenance men. They too were appalled at the sight and eventually escorted Mulder and Scully out of their own office.

"We think you might have an infestation of cockroaches- we're still double-checking on that- but it looks like the office is going to have to be fumigated for the remainder of the day. If you want, I can call your supervisor and inform them about it."

"That would be much appreciated, thank you." Mulder smiled and quickly left his office.

Scully caught up with him out in the hall.

"Well, we still have work today, but we need your files. In your office."

"We can't work today," Mulder stated, barely containing his anxiety. "We'll just have to take today off."

"Okay, let's just take today off."

"Bye, Mulder."

And with that, Scully left Mulder with the fumigators in the hallway, suddenly faced with a day off.

The ride home was short, but Scully was thankful to not be in the office. With her work at the FBI, her personal life had almost come to a standstill, never able to move forward. She was finally able to relax. Scully's first order of business was to clean her handgun. It had been months since the last time she had cleaned it, and it was past due for another round. She pulled the gun from its place on her holster and placed it on the table. She gathered the supplies necessary to clean the weapon. After that, she disassembled her gun.

The gun-cleaning process was shorter than normal. It managed to occupy at least two hours, and Scully had anticipated the task to take at least a little longer. She found herself slowly slipping into a trance, her thoughts focused on that of her partner and how he had saved her life just last week. As she continued to do her chores around her house the thought of Mulder remained a constant companion in the back of her mind.

Scully kept herself busy with all of those "rainy day" tasks, that she didn't even notice it had become dark outside. She was pleased with her progress and started to feel just a slight twinge of guilt, when the phone rang. She answered it and immediately suspected Mulder knew exactly who was responsible for their sudden day off.

"Scully."

"Scully, I need you to come down to this house in Long Island. I think we've found something."

She sighed, relieved that Mulder was calling about a case. "What do you think you've found?"

"Uh, an anomaly."

"An extraterrestrial biological one, Mulder?"

"I can't talk about it over the phone, you're just going to have to come down."

Mulder gave Scully the address to the house, and Scully assured him she would be down there in a few hours. She hoped the flight wouldn't be too long, what with the snow coming down over Washington DC that day. It had been falling at six inches an hour. However she risked it and took her flight.

One hour and thirty minutes of maneuvering a car through an unexpectedly heavy snow found Scully outside the house Mulder mentioned over the phone. She didn't think much of the house at first glance; just an old residence probably abandoned for thirty odd years at least. The property was marked by a sign hanging lazily off its post. The sign read 'Meadow'.

Mulder greeted her at the threshold of the door.

"Welcome to the Fields' residence," Mulder greeted in his usual informal tone.

"Fields? But the sign said Meadow."

He nodded. "This house has seen a major surge in paranormal activity since its most recent condemnation in 1997. The most recent residents were the Meadows- a military family who moved around a lot because the head of the house was a naval captain. And while the captain was away, the two children and the mother of the house died of illness. The captain's ship apparently encountered an accident and his ship sank to the bottom of the sea. He was never heard from again. Due to a mix-up when burying the Meadow family," Mulder broke into a wide grin, "they were buried in the wrong plot and in a synonymous twist, were interred in the Fields' plot. Legend has it that the naval captain comes back on January 13th of every year in order to find his missing family."

"Well Mulder, thanks for the urban legend, but I need to get back to my day off."

"Look at this, Scully." Mulder pointed to the wall adjacent to her. The word "MEADOW" was burnt into the wall adjacent to her.

Scully sighed and responded, "Let's split up, we might cover more ground that way."

Mulder and Scully, with a look, instinctively went in opposite directions to search the house more efficiently. The hallway Scully chose was a dead end, or so she thought, until she noticed a door at the end of the hall, which had been covered with wallpaper. Scully pushed her way through the brittle covering, to what she conjectured to be a bedroom. She spotted a seemingly normal picture of a woman with her two children. But upon closer inspection, she saw a shadowy translucent figure standing in the background. She turned the photograph over, and discovered the words: BEFORE THE WAR, MEADOW FAMILY, 1936. Her concentration was interrupted when she heard a loud bang in the distance. She immediately called out to Mulder and ran toward where she last left him.

She ran toward the commotion and suddenly found herself in a large room. The door shut behind her. In front of her was the dead naval captain, which looked similar to the one from the photograph. His attention was fixated on Mulder, who had suddenly become white as a sheet. The ghost was practically roaring at Mulder, demanding the whereabouts of his family. The usually quick-witted agent was dumbfounded and at a loss for words when faced with a specter from beyond the grave.

"Your family is dead! They died years ago of a pathogen they were exposed to. They're buried in the Fields' plot, not the Meadow's plot!"

The ghost's attention turned to Scully, and a sudden look of realization came over his face. For a split second, Scully thought the spirit lurched towards her and she instinctively reached for her firearm. Then, a blinding white light flashed, and the ghost was gone. The first thing she noticed was a dazed Mulder.

"What happened?" Mulder blubbered.

Scully, with a bewildered look on her face, replied, "I think a reunion."

The next day, Mulder and Scully found themselves back into a regular routine.

"Although we investigated an X-File last night, Mulder, it was still nice to have most of the day off," Scully remarked as she sat down. "I would have done almost anything to get a day off."

Just then, Mulder received an invoice at his door. It was a bill for a couple dozen household cockroaches addressed to a Dana Scully. Mulder shot Scully a look.

Scully only smiled. "Oh, come on Mulder, this isn't the first time you've been bugged."


End file.
